"SIX HUNDRED!" Wallie cried in desperation.

With the bid Canby raised his hat and ran his fingers through his hair casually and the veterinary stopped bidding.

"Done!" cried the auctioneer, "Sold to Mr.—the name, please—ah, Macpherson, for six hundred dollars—— A bargain!"

Between relief and joy Wallie was speechless, while Canby congratulated him and the crowd bestowed upon him glances of either derision or commiseration, according to the nature of the individual.

While he stood trying to realize his good fortune and that he was the owner of as good a pair of work-horses as ever looked through a halter, a figure that made his heart jump came swiftly forward, and with her hands in the pockets of her long motor coat, stopped in front of his team and scrutinized them closely.

Helene Spenceley looked from one of the horses to the other. She saw the dilated pupils, the abnormally full forehead, the few coarse hairs growing just above the eyelid, and they told her what she had suspected.

"I am sorry I did not know it was you who was bidding on these horses," she said, turning to Wallie.

"Did you want them, Miss Spenceley? I am sorry——"

"Want them? You couldn't give them to me. They are locoed!"

"Locoed!" He could only stare at her, hoping never again to feel such dismay as filled him at that moment.

He had only the vaguest notion as to what "locoed" meant, but it was very clear that it was something highly undesirable. And he had been cheated by Canby, who had known of it and advised him to buy them! Such duplicity was without his experience, and sickened him nearly as much as the thought of the $600 he had invested in horses so radically wrong that Helene Spenceley would not take them as a gift.

The single thought which came to solace him as he stood humiliated and panic-stricken was that she resented the dishonest trick that had been played upon him.

Canby came forward to greet her, with his hand out. She ignored it and said indignantly:

"I should have spoiled this sale for you, Mr. Canby, if I had seen who was bidding on these locoed horses."

Though Canby flushed, he shrugged a shoulder and replied callously:

"We all had to get our eyeteeth cut when we came to the country."



CHAPTER X

THE BEST PULLING TEAM IN THE STATE

Leading the cow, and aided by "Tex" McGonnigle, who boasted that he had a heart as big as the country he lived in and was willing to prove it by helping him with the locoed horses, Wallie made fair progress as far as the gate in the last wire fence, where "Tex" had to leave him.

"'Tain't fur now," said that person, passing over the rope with a knot in the end with which he had belaboured the horses he had driven ahead of him. "Mog along stiddy and you'd ought to make it by sundown."

"I think I'll lead 'em," Wallie remarked.

"Locoed horses won't lead—you've got to drive 'em."

Nevertheless, on the chance that "Tex" might not know everything, Wallie tried it after his helper had galloped in another direction.

"The best pulling team in the state!" the auctioneer had declared, and truthfully. Wallie had a notion they could have moved the Capitol building if they had laid back on it as they did their halters when he tried to lead them.

There was nothing for it but to tie their heads together and drive them as Tex had done, but with even less success. They missed either Tex's voluble and spicy encouragement or the experienced hand which laid on the rope end, but the chief difficulty seemed to be that they were of different minds as to the direction which they should take, and since the cow was of still another, Wallie was confronted with a difficult situation.

Dragging the mild-eyed Jersey, which had developed an incredible obstinacy with the cessation of Tex's Comanche yells behind her, Wallie applied the rope he had inherited, with the best imitation he could give of the performance, but futilely.

The cow and the horses pulling in opposite directions went around and around in a circle until the trampled earth looked as if it had been the site of a cider-press or a circus.

After they had milled for twenty minutes without advancing a step Wallie lost patience.

"Oh, sugar!" he cried. "This is certainly very, very annoying!"

The cow was as much an obstacle to the continuance of their journey as the horses, since, bawling at intervals, she planted her feet and allowed her neck to be stretched until Wallie was fearful that it would separate, leaving only her gory head in the halter.

With this unpleasant possibility confronting him, Wallie shrank from putting too much strain upon it with the result that the cow learned that if she bawled loud enough and laid back hard enough, he would ease up on the rope by which he was dragging her.

Wallie had been taught from infancy that kindness was the proper method of conquering animals, therefore he addressed the cow in tones of saccharine sweetness and with a persuasive manner that would have charmed a bird off a tree.

"Bossy! Bossy! Good bossy!" he cajoled her.

Immune to flattery, she looked at him with an expression which reminded him of a servant girl who knows she is giving notice at an inopportune time. Then she planted her feet still deeper in the sand and bawled at him.

"Darn it!" he cried, finally, in his exasperation.

As he sat helpless in his dilemma, wondering what to do next, an idea occurred to him which was so clever and feasible that he lost no time in executing it.

If he tied the cow to the stirrup of his saddle and she showed no disposition to escape, then he could walk and drive the work-horses ahead, returning for his saddle-horse and the cow! This, to be sure, was a slow process, but it was an improvement over spending the night going around in a circle.

Wallie tied the cow's rope to the stirrup and both animals stood as if they were nailed to the spot while he ran after the work-horses, who had wandered in another direction. His boots, he noted, were not adapted to walking as they pinched in the toes and instep. He could not stop for such a small matter at this critical moment, however, so he continued to run until he overtook the horses and started them homeward.

Turning to look at the cow and his saddle-horse, he saw them walking briskly, side by side, like soul-mates who understood each other perfectly, in the opposite direction from which he wanted them to go. He left the horses and ran after the cow, shouting:

"Whoa—can't you?"

He reasoned swiftly that the Jersey was the nucleus of a herd which would one day run up into the thousands, and he must get her at all hazards.

"Whoa! Bossy—wait for me!" he pleaded as at top speed he went after her.

"Good bossy! Good bossy!" His quavering voice was pathetic.

At the sound of his voice the horse stopped, turned its head, and looked at him. The cow stopped also.

Intensely relieved, Wallie dropped to a walk, congratulating himself that the livery horse chanced to be so well trained and obedient. As he approached, the cow stepped forward that she might look under the horse's neck and watch her pursuer. Both animals stood like statues, regarding him intently. When within fifty feet Wallie said in a conciliatory tone to show them that he stood ready to forgive them in spite of the inconvenience to which they had put him:

"Nice horsey! Good bossy!"

Quite as if it were a signal, "Nice horsey and good bossy" started at a trot which quickly left Wallie far behind them.

Wallie ran until he felt that his overtaxed lungs were bursting. His boots were killing him, his shin bones ached, and his feet at every step sank to the ankles in the loose sand. It was like running through a bog. He pursued until he was bent double with the effort and his legs grew numb. The perspiration streamed from under his stylish derby, his stock wilted, and his clothing was as wet as if it had been raining.

When his legs would carry him not one step farther he stopped and looked after the cow and horse—who were still doing perfect team-work, trotting side by side as evenly as if they had been harnessed together. They stopped instantly when he stopped, and, as before, the horse turned its head to look back at him while the cow peered under its neck at Wallie.

Hope revived again when they showed no disposition to move, and after he had panted awhile, Wallie thought that by feigning indifference and concealing his real purpose he might approach them. To this end, he whistled with so much breath as his chase had left him, tossed pebbles inconsequently, and sauntered toward the pair as if he had all the day before him.

The subterfuge seemed to be succeeding, and he was once more within fifty feet of them when they whirled about simultaneously and started at the same lively trot, leaving Wallie far behind them.

A humane consideration for animals had been inculcated in Wallie from childhood by Aunt Mary, but now he felt such a yearning to inflict pain upon the cow and the livery horse that it would have shocked that lady if she could have read his thoughts as he chased them. He visualized the two of them tied to a tree while he laid on the rope-end, and the picture afforded him intense satisfaction.

Exhausted, and with his heart pounding under his silk shirt-bosom, Wallie stopped at last because he had to. Immediately the horse and cow stopped also. While he gasped, a fresh manoeuvre occurred to Wallie. Perhaps if he made a circle, gradually getting closer, by a quick dash he could catch the bridle reins.

As he circled, the gaze of the horse and cow followed him with the keenest interest. Finally he was close enough to see the placid look of benevolence with which his cow was regarding him and success seemed about to reward his efforts. The horse, too, had half closed its eyes by the time he was ready for his coup, as if it had lost all interest in eluding him.

"Nice horsey! Good bossy!" Wallie murmured, reassuringly.

For the third time he was within fifty feet of them, and while he was debating as to whether to make his dash or try to get a little closer, the pair, seeming to recognize fifty feet as the danger zone, threw up their heads and tails and went off at a gallop.

Grinding his teeth in a way that could not but have been detrimental to the enamel, Wallie stood looking after them. A profane word never had passed his lips since he had had his mouth washed out with castile soap for saying "devil." But now with deliberate, appalling abandon, and the emphasis of a man who had cursed from his cradle, he yelled after the fleeing fiends incarnate:

"Go to hell—damn you!"

Instantly shocked and ashamed of himself, Wallie instinctively looked skyward, half expecting to see an outraged Jehovah ready to heave a thunderbolt down on him, though he felt that the Almighty in justice should recognize the provocation, and forgive him.

Weary, with blistered heels and drooping shoulders, Wallie plodded after them while time and again they repeated the performance until it would have worn down a bloodhound to have followed the tracks made by Wallie and the renegades.

The sun set and the colours faded, yet Wallie with a dogged tenacity he had not known was in him trudged back and forth, around and around, in pursuit of the runaways, buoyed up chiefly by the hope that if he could catch them he might soon be wealthy enough to afford to kill them.

It was nearly dusk, and a night in the open seemed before him when the pair stopped and commenced feeding toward him. Whether they had become hungry or the sport had palled on them were questions Wallie could not answer. It was enough that they waited like two lambs for him to walk up and catch them.

He was so tired that when he got himself in the saddle with the cow ambling along meekly at his stirrup, he found himself feeling grateful to them instead of vindictive. The locoed horses he decided to leave until morning.

By the time he had reached his homestead and fallen out of the saddle, he had forgotten that he had sworn to tie them up and "whale" them. On the contrary, he was wondering if milking were a difficult process and if he could accomplish it, for he could not find it in his heart to let a dumb brute suffer. He remembered hearing that cows should be milked regularly, and while his Jersey had goaded him to blasphemy he knew that he would not be able to sleep if she was in pain through his negligence.

Picketing the horse as Pinkey had taught him, he put the cow on a rope also. Then he set about the performance which had looked so simple when he had seen others engage in it.

Among his accoutrements was a flashlight, and with this and a lard can Wallie stood for a moment speculating as to whether the cow had any preference as to the side she was milked on. He could not see that it would make any material difference, so he sat down on his heel on the side nearest and turned his flashlight on the spot where he wished to operate. Placing his lard can on the ground where he could throw a stream into it conveniently, he used his free hand for that purpose.

To his surprise, nothing happened—except that the cow stopped chewing her cud and looked at him inquiringly. He persisted, but uselessly. Was anything wrong with his system, he wondered? He thought not, since he was milking exactly as he had seen the hired man milk on a farm where he had once spent a month in his childhood.

He varied his method, making gentle experiments, but at the end of ten minutes the lard can was still empty and the cow was growing restless. For that he could not blame her. His hand ached and his foot seemed about to break off at the ankle from sitting on it.

Wallie felt chagrined when he reflected that although he was a graduate of Haverford College and was bringing all his intelligence to bear upon it he was still unable to do what any hired man with an inch of forehead could accomplish with no apparent effort.

Perhaps there was some trick about it—perhaps it did make a difference which side a cow was milked on. Wallie walked around and turned the spot-light on the other side of his Jersey.

The outlook, he fancied, seemed more promising.

He sat down on his heel and started in energetically.

It did make a difference which side one milked on—there was no doubt about it. The instant he touched her she lifted her foot and with an aim which was not only deadly and unerring but remarkable, considering that she could not see her target, planted it in the pit of Wallie's stomach with such force that the muffled thud of it sounded like someone beating a carpet. The kick knocked the breath out of him, and as he lay on his back on a clump of cactus he was sure that he was bleeding internally and probably dying.

Wallie finally got to his feet painfully and with both hands on his stomach looked at the cow, who was again chewing tranquilly. There was murder in Wallie's eyes as he yelled at her:

"Curse you! I could cut your heart out!"

Then he crept up the path to his tent and dropped down on his pneumatic mattress, doubting if he ever would rise from it. As he lay there, supperless, with his clothes on, every muscle in his body aching, to say nothing of the sensation in his stomach, it seemed incredible that he could be the same person who had started off so blithely in the morning.

The series of misfortunes which had befallen him overwhelmed him. He had purchased a cow which not only gave no milk but had a vicious disposition. He had paid two prices for a pair of locoed horses that did their pulling backward. He had made himself a laughing stock to the entire country and seemed destined to play the clown somehow whenever Helene Spenceley was in the vicinity. His ears grew red to the rims as he thought of it.

But she had resented Canby's dishonesty for him—that was something; and Wallie was in a mood to be grateful for anything.

The cow grunted as she lay down to her slumbers—Wallie ground his teeth as he heard her. A coyote yapped on a ridge forlornly and the horse on picket coughed and snorted while Wallie, staring at the stars through the entrance, massaged his injury and ruminated.

Suddenly he sat up on his patent air mattress and shook his fist at the universe:

"Canby nor nobody else shall down me! I'm going to make good somehow, or fertilize Wyoming as old Appel told me. I'll show 'em!"

After that he felt better; so much better that he fell asleep immediately, and even the activities of two field-mice, who pulled and snipped at his hair with their sharp teeth in the interests of a nest they were building, only disturbed without awakening him.



CHAPTER XI

MERRY CHRISTMAS

Wallie shivered in his sleep and pulled the soogans higher. The act exposed his feet instead of his shoulders, so it did not add to his comfort. He felt sleepily for the flour sack which he wore on his head as protection against the dust that blew in through the crack in the logs and his fingers sank into a small snow bank that had accumulated on his pillow.

The chill of it completely awakened him. He found that there was frost on the end of his nose and he was in a miniature blizzard as far as his shoulders. The wind was howling around the corners and driving the first snow of the season through the many large cracks in his log residence.

The day was Christmas, and there was no reason to believe that it would be a merry one.

Wallie lay for a time considering the prospect and comparing it with other Christmases. He had a kettle of boiled beans, cold soda biscuit, coffee, and two prairie-dogs which he intended cooking as an experiment, for his Christmas dinner.

Growing more and more frugal as his bank account shrank with alarming rapidity, Wallie reasoned that if he could eat prairie-dog it would serve a double purpose: While ridding his land of the pests it would save him much in such high-priced commodities as ham and bacon. Prairie-dog might not be a delicacy sought after by epicures, yet he never had heard anything directly against them, beyond their propensity for burrowing, which made them undesirable tenants. He reasoned that since they subsisted upon roots mainly, they were of cleanly habits and quite as apt to be nourishing and appetizing, if properly cooked, as rabbit.

Having the courage of his convictions, Wallie skinned and dressed the prairie-dogs he had caught out of their holes one sunshiny morning, and meant to eat them for his Christmas dinner if it was humanly possible.

The subject of food occupied a large part of Wallie's time and attention since he was not yet sufficiently practised to make cooking easy. He had purchased an expensive cook book, but as his larder seldom contained any of the ingredients it called for, he considered the price of it wasted. He had found that the recipes imparted by Tex McGonnigle, who had built his ten-by-twelve log cabin for him, were far more practical. Under his tuition Wallie had learned to make "sweat-pads," "dough-gods," "mulligan," and other dishes with names deemed unsuitable for publication.

After considering his dinner menu for a time, Wallie drew his knees to his chin, which enabled him to his get entire body under the soogan, and contrasted his present surroundings with those of the previous Christmas.

In the spacious Florida hotel last year he had only to touch a button to bring a uniformed menial who served him coffee and lighted a grate fire for him, while the furnishings of his room and bath were quite as luxurious as those of The Colonial.

Now, as the light strengthened, Wallie could see his third-handed stove purchased from the secondhand man, Tucker, standing in the corner with its list to starboard. The wind blowing through the baling wire which anchored the stove-pipe to the wall sounded like an aeolian harp played by a maniac. His patent camp chair had long since given way beneath him, and when he had found at the Prouty Emporium two starch boxes of the right height, he had been as elated when they were given to him as if he had been the recipient of a valuable present. They now served as chairs on either side of his plank table.

His pneumatic mattress had collapsed from punctures, and Wallie's bones were uncomfortably close to the boards in the bottom of the bunk McGonnigle had built against one end of the cabin. His pillow was a flour sack filled with straw and of a doubtful colour, as was also the hand towel hanging on a nail beside a shocking wash basin.

There was a dirt roof on the cabin from which clods of earth fell rather frequently and bounced on Wallie's head or dropped in the food, or on his bed to startle him when sleeping. The floor contained knotholes through which the field mice and chipmunks came up to share his provisions, and the door, being a trifle larger than the frame, could not be closed entirely.

When Wallie had called McGonnigle's attention to the fact that he could stand in the middle of his cabin and view the scenery through the cracks in any direction, McGonnigle had assured him that "fresh air never hurt nobody," and while he cheerfully admitted that he was not a carpenter, declared that he had made allowances for this fact in his charges.

Though Wallie could not notice it when he paid them, he said nothing, for by now he was accustomed to having everything cost more than he had anticipated, however liberal he might be in his estimate.

Boise Bill rode by occasionally and inquired humorously if he thought he would "winter." To which Wallie always replied that he intended to, though there were moments of depression when he doubted it.

It was upon Wallie's inability to "winter" that Canby was counting. He had hung on longer than Canby had thought he would, but the cattleman felt fairly sure that the first big snowstorm would see the last of Wallie. The hardships and loneliness would "get" him as it did most tenderfeet, Canby reasoned, and some morning he would saddle up in disgust, leaving another homestead open to entry.

If, perchance, this did not happen, Canby had a system of his own for eliminating settlers. It was quite as efficacious as open warfare, though it took longer and was open to the objection that sometimes it enabled them to stay long enough to plow up eighty acres or so which went to weeds when they abandoned it.

Canby had no personal feeling against Wallie and, after meeting him, decided he would use the more lawful and humane method of ridding himself of him. Instead of running him off by threats and violence he would merely starve him out, and Wallie's bank balance indicated that Canby was in a fair way to accomplish his purpose.

Several happenings had made Wallie suspect something of Canby's purpose, and the same latent quality which had made Wallie trudge doggedly after his cow and horse until he had worn out their perversity always made him tell himself grimly that he was going to stick until he had his crop in and harvested if he laid down, a skeleton, and died beside one of his own haystacks.

Mostly, however, he was so busy with his cooking, feeding his livestock, getting wood and water, to say nothing of piling rocks and grubbing sagebrush that he had no time to brood over Canby and the wrongs he had done him. He had learned from McGonnigle that his locoed horses would grow worse instead of better and eventually would have to be shot, and that person had imparted the discouraging information also that not only could he expect no milk from his cow until her calf arrived in January but Jerseys were a breed not commonly selected for beef cattle.

Wallie had thought that his aunt would surely relent to the extent of writing him a Christmas letter but, yesterday, after riding eight miles to look in the bluing box nailed to a post by the roadside, he had found that it had contained only a circular urging him to raise mushrooms in his cellar.

Helene Spenceley, too, might have sent him a Christmas card or something. He had seen her only twice since the sale, and each time she had whizzed past him in Canby's machine on the way to Prouty. The sight had given him a curious feeling which he had tried to analyze but had been unable to find a satisfactory name for it.

Altogether, Wallie felt very lonely and forlorn and forgotten this Christmas morning as he lay in a knot under the soogan, listening to the wind twanging the stove-pipe wire and contemplating his present and future.

He had discovered that by craning his neck slightly when in a certain position he could look through a crack and see the notch in the mountain, below which was the Spenceley ranch, according to Pinkey. He was prompted to do so now, but an eyeful of snow discouraged his observation, so he decided that he would get up, feed his animals and, after breakfast, wash his shirt and a few towels by way of recreation.

The cabin was not only as cold as it looked but colder, and as Wallie hopped over the floor bare-footed and shivering he reflected that very likely his potatoes and onions were frozen and wished he had taken them to bed with him.

They were, unmistakably, for they rattled like glass balls when he picked up several onions and examined them with a pained expression.

Wallie was still wearing much of the wardrobe he had brought with him, and when dressed to go outside he was warm but unique in a green velour hat, his riding breeches, brilliant golf stockings that were all but feetless thrust in arctics, a blue flannel shirt from the Emporium in Prouty, and a long, tight-fitting tan coat which had once been very smart indeed.

The snow had stopped falling by the time he had done his chores and breakfasted. The only benefit the storm had brought him was that it did away with the necessity of carrying water for his washing. He had acquired the agility of a cliff-dweller from scaling the embankment by means of the "toe-holts"; yet, at that, it was no easy matter to transport a bucket of water without spilling it.

He wished for a well every time that he panted in from a trip to the creek, and meant to have one as soon as he could afford it.

While the snow-water was melting Wallie considered the manner in which he should prepare the prairie-dogs. He presumed that it was too much to expect that the cook book would have anything to say on the subject, but it surely would recognize rabbit, and a recipe suitable for one would do for the other.

Wallie got out his cook book and turned eagerly to the index. There was no mention of rabbit. A thought struck him—rabbit was hare and hare was rabbit, wasn't it? If so, the cook book would not admit it, for there was no such word under the H's.

He was disgusted. What good was such a cook book, he asked himself as he turned the leaves in resentment. He wished he could collect the two-fifty he had paid for it. He read aloud, sneeringly:

"Caviar toast, garnished. Crab, scalloped, in shell. Aspic in jelly. Fondu of cheese. Floating Island. Meringue glace, and Whipped Cream."

The mere mention of the dishes made his mouth water, while his anger against the dame who had compiled it mounted higher. He remotely contemplated writing to inquire of the culinary oracle why she had ignored hare and rabbit.

Continuing to scan the index, his eye caught a word which held possibilities. Game! If rabbit was not game, what was it?

Ah! Wallie looked at a picture of a rabbit lying on a platter with its legs in the air and artistically decorated with parsley until he felt more hungry than ever. Then he read aloud with gusto:

"Barbecued rabbit. Casserole of rabbit. Roast rabbit. Smothered rabbit. Stewed rabbit."

He perused all the recipes carefully. After giving weighty consideration to each, roast rabbit seemed to make the strongest appeal to him. He read the recipe aloud twice that he might the better comprehend it:

"Dress and wash the wily coureur de bois, but leave the heads on in cleaning them. Stuff the bodies with a forcemeat of fat, salt pork, minced onions, and fine bread crumbs well seasoned with salt and pepper. Sew them up with fine thread and lay upon thin slices of pork, covering the grating of the roaster. Lay other slices of pork over them, pour over all a cupful of stock, and roast one hour. Remove the pork, then wash with butter and dredge with flour and brown.

"Drain off the gravy, lay the bits of bacon about the rabbit in the dish: thicken the gravy with browned flour. Boil up, add a tablespoonful of tomato catsup and a glass of claret, then take from the fire."

Wallie reflected, as he sat with his feet on the stove-hearth overflowing with ashes, that when it came to the "forcemeat" he was "there with the crumbs," since he had an accumulation of ancient biscuit too hard to eat. Also he had salt pork and onions. The butter, tomato catsup, stock, claret, he must dispense with. After all, the prairie-dogs were the main thing and he had them.

He congratulated himself that he had decided to leave on the heads when skinning them. The recipe so enthused him that he decided to prepare them before starting in with his washing.

Obviously the first thing to do was to thaw the onions, so he put them in the oven, after which he went to a box in the corner and selected a few biscuit. Crumbs were crumbs, as he viewed it, and biscuit crumbs were quite as good as bread crumbs for his purpose.

There were certain marks on these biscuit that were made unmistakably by the teeth of mice and chipmunks, but these traces he removed painstakingly. As he reduced the biscuit to crumbs with a hammer, he recalled that he had been awakened several times by the sound of these pestiferous animals frisking in the box in the corner. He did not allow his mind to dwell upon this, however, lest it prejudice him when it came to the eating of the "forcemeat."

Onions, he found, were not improved by freezing. Those he removed from the oven were distinctly pulpy, but since they smelled like onion and tasted like it, he mushed them in with the biscuit crumbs, and seasoned.

Then he crammed the prairie-dogs with the mixture and looked for a thread among his sewing articles. Since he could find nothing but black linen, Wallie threaded a darning needle and did a fancy "feather" stitch down the middle of each of them.

This accomplished, he stood off and viewed his handiwork with eminent pride and satisfaction, though it occurred to him that owing to his generous use of "forcemeat" they had a bloated appearance, as if they had died of strychnine poisoning.

The heads, too, were decidedly rat-like, and as the long, sharp teeth of the pair of them grinned up at Wallie he covered them hastily and set about his washing.

He had come to begrudge every stick of firewood, and it took an incredible amount to heat wash-water. A man could very well fill his time if he did nothing but collect wood and carry water.

As he set his tub and washboard on a box and rubbed vigorously on his undergarments, he smiled to himself and wondered what his friends of The Colonial would say if they could see him at the moment. He did not so much mind washing, it was easier than digging post holes, but it was not much of a way to spend Christmas and he was desperately lonely. He wished someone would come along to talk to.

He was so far from the road that there were no passersby, and no one wanted to see him anyhow, but his loneliness became so great as he dwelt upon it that on the remote chance that he might see someone even in the distance he stopped washing and walked to the window, where with his elbow he rubbed a spot clear of frost.

Looking out through the loop-hole, it was a white, tractless world he gazed upon, and he might have been in the Arctic Circle for all the signs of life he could discover. He told himself that he might have known better than to hope for any.

As he squinted, he suddenly pressed his eye harder against the window. Did he see a speck that moved or did he imagine it? He enlarged the hole and strained his eyes until they watered. Surely it moved—surely. It would be too disappointing for words if it were only a delusion.

It did! It did! There was now no mistake about it. Someone was coming toward the cabin. Wallie shook with excitement at the prospect of a visitor. Whoever it might be, Wallie would make him stay for dinner if he had to pay him by the hour for his company. That was settled. Very likely it was Pinkey, but to-day even Boise Bill would be welcome.

Wallie shoved his Christmas dinner in the oven and slammed the door upon it, stoked the fire lavishly, then fell upon the washboard and rubbed furiously that he might be done the sooner. At intervals he dashed to the window, half afraid to look lest the rider had changed his mind and gone in another direction.

But no, he kept coming, and there was something in the way he sat his horse which made him think it was Pinkey.

And Pinkey it was, brilliant as a rainbow in orange chaps, red flannel shirt, and a buckskin waistcoat. His coat tied behind the cantle suggested that he either had become overheated or at only twelve below zero had not yet felt the need of it. His horse was snorting steam like a locomotive and icicles of frozen breath were pendent from its nostrils.

Wallie stood in the door, suds to the elbow and his hands steaming, waiting to receive him.

His voice trembled as he greeted him:

"I never was so glad to see anybody in my life, Pinkey."

"This is onct I know you ain't lyin'. Got anything to eat? I'm starvin'. I been comin' sence daylight."

"I got something special," Wallie replied, mysteriously. "Tie your horse to the haystack. I'll hurry things up a little."

Pinkey returned shortly and sniffed as he entered:

"It smells good, anyhow. There's something homelike about onions. What you cookin'?"

"It's a secret, but you'll like 'em. I made 'em out of the cook book."

Pinkey threw his coat on the table and the thud sounded as if it had a brick rolled in it.

"Here's something Helene sent—she made it—it's angel food or somethin', I reckon."

"Now wasn't that good of her!" Wallie exclaimed, gratefully.

"I can't tell till I taste it. I wouldn't call her much of a cook generally." He prodded the cake as he unrolled it and commented:

"Gosh, it's hard! I turned my thumb-nail back on it."

"It's frozen—that's what's the matter," Wallie defended, promptly.

"I think it's a bum cake," declared Pinkey, callously.

"I think you don't know what you're talking about until you try it," Wallie retorted with asperity.

Pinkey looked at him thoughtfully and changed the subject.

"I see you're playin' a tune on the washboard."

Wallie replied stiffly:

"Yes, I'm doing a little laundry." Pinkey's criticism of the cake still rankled.

"You ain't washin' that blue shirt a'ready?" Pinkey demanded, incredulously. "You only bought it Thanksgivin'."

"The front of it bent like rubber-glass and I couldn't stand it any longer." He added reminiscently: "There was a time when I wore a fresh shirt daily."

Pinkey stared at him awe-stricken:

"I wouldn't think changin' as often as that would be healthy."

The clothes in the dishpan on the stove boiled over, and as Wallie jumped for the broom-handle to poke them under, Pinkey demanded:

"Are you bilin' your flannens?"

"Certainly."

"A ten-year-ol' boy can't git in that suit of underwear onct you're done cookin' it," Pinkey explained, and added, disgustedly: "Wallie, don't you know nuthin'?"

Wallie looked his consternation.

"I'll know better next time," he said, humbly.

Pinkey consulted his watch and hinted:

"Don't you want me to make the bread?"

"No, I have some biscuit to warm over, we'll boil potatoes, thaw the cake out, open some pineapple, and with what I have in the oven we will have a dinner that'll be nothing short of a banquet."

"Great! I'm so hungry I could eat with a Digger Injun."

Wallie opened the oven door.

"They're browning beautifully!" he reported.

"Chickens?"

Wallie shook his head:

"I shan't tell you until you've passed upon them."

"If you've got enough of whatever it is—that's all that's worryin' me," declared Pinkey, hungrily. "You'd ought to build you a root cellar next winter—if you're livin'," he remarked as the potatoes rattled when Wallie dropped them in the kettle.

"Do you suppose I could grow potatoes? Is it too dry?"

"This is a great country for potatoes. There's somethin' in the soil that gits in the potatoes' eyes and makes 'em water so they irrigate themselves. Shore! you can grow potatoes."

"I want to make a good many improvements here before next winter," announced Wallie, hopefully. "I wish you could come over for awhile and help me."

"That mightn't be a bad idea," said Pinkey, thoughtfully. "Sence the country went dry I don't much care whether I draw wages or not—they's nothin' to spend money for, so what's the use of workin'? If I was over here I might add a few feet to my rope and git me a good little start off Canby."

"Do you see much of him?" Wallie asked, indifferently.

"Too much," said Pinkey, shortly.

Wallie dropped the pan he was turning in the oven.

"They're browning beautifully," he exclaimed hastily.

"You said that before. Ain't it gittin' time to work on 'em?"

"Remove your feet and I'll set the table."

"Can't you spread a paper for a tablecloth? I always git splinters in my elbows when I eat off rough lumber."

Wallie laughed good-humouredly as he obliged him.

"That's shore a great smell comin' from the oven! Let's eat, feller."

"You certainly are hungry, Pinkey. If I may judge by appearances, you are not going to be disappointed. You sit down while I put things on the table."

Pinkey needed no second invitation.

"I like spuds cooked with the clothes on," he observed as he skinned a potato.

"I trust everything is going to be to your liking," Wallie declared, cordially, as he drew the prairie-dogs from the oven and laid them on an agate-ware platter.

Busy with his potato, Pinkey did not see them until they were before him. Then he stopped and stared hard as they lay on their backs grinning up at him with the "forcemeat" oozing through the stitching.

"What are they?" His emphasis was not flattering.

"I shan't tell you yet," declared Wallie.

Pinkey continued to eye them suspiciously.

"They kinda remind me of a mummy I seen in a side-show; then, again, they look like incubator childern—roasted. Them teeth are what git me. I can't quite place 'em. 'Tain't wood-pussy or nothin', Wallie? 'Tain't no notorious animal like pole-kitty?"

Wallie looked offended.

"I intend to eat some myself," he replied with dignity.

"Are they some kind of a varmint?" Dubiously.

"Varmint?"

"Pack-rat or weasel?"

"Scarcely!"

Wallie looked so injured that Pinkey said apologetically:

"I was jest cur'ous." But inquired further: "Is that stuffin' or in'ards coming through the sewin' down the front of 'em?"

"Forcemeat. I made it according to a recipe."

"Indeed?" Politely. "Don't go shy yourself jest because I'm here," he protested, as Wallie attempted to cut one in two with the butcher-knife. "I ain't feelin' so hungry—somethin' has took my appetite."

As the table swayed under Wallie's efforts to carve a prairie-dog, he suggested:

"Perhaps if you took hold of one leg——"

"Ye-ah," said Pinkey, humorously, "and you take holt of the other and put your foot on my chest so you kin git a purchase, then we'll both pull and somethin's bound to happen."

"If I could only find a joint——"

"Worry one of them legs off and we'll see how we like it before you play yourself out on it."

Wallie acted upon the suggestion and presented the severed member.

"Try it," he urged, persuasively.

Pinkey sunk his grinders into the leg and laid back on it.

"Does it seem tough?" Wallie asked, watching him anxiously.

"Tough! I'm scairt it's goin' to snap back and knock me over. Wait till I git a fresh holt on it."

"Do you get the flavour at all?"

"I can't pull enough off to taste it," Pinkey replied, plaintively.

"Try the dressing and tell me what you think of it." Wallie scooped out a generous spoonful and placed it on his plate, waiting confidently for the verdict.

Pinkey conveyed his knife to his mouth while Wallie stood regarding him with an expression of pleased expectancy as he tasted.

A startled look was succeeded by one that was unmistakably horror. Pinkey knocked over the box upon which he was sitting as he jumped from the table and tore the kitchen door open.

Wallie watched him wonderingly:

"Tell you what I think of it!" Pinkey declared, returning. "I ain't got words—they ain't none in the dictionary. My Gawd! what is it made of?"

"Just biscuit crumbs and onions," said Wallie, colouring.

"Where did you keep 'em?"

Wallie pointed to the box on the floor in the corner.

Pinkey made a hideous grimace.

"Gimme a drink of water! Gimme a chew of tobacco! Gimme anything to take the taste of mouse out'n my mouth. Wallie," solemnly, "men have died fer less'n that in this country. If I thought you'd done that on purpose I'd slit your throat from ear to ear and leave you."

"I thought I was very particular and cut off everything that looked suspicious," said Wallie, meekly, "I must have missed something."

"You shore did! And," Pinkey demanded, "what might them horrors be on the platter? Them teeth are mighty familiar."

Wallie quavered:

"Prairie-dog—I was experimenting to see if they were edible."

"Leave me out in the air again!" Pinkey groaned as he swallowed a drink of water. "And I passed up a turkey dinner to come and eat with you!"

"Shan't I cook you some bacon?" asked Wallie, contritely.

"I doubt if I ever feel like eatin' agin, but if the cake's thawed out I'll try a chunk of it to take my mind off that stuffin'."

Wallie opened the can of pineapple he had been treasuring and Pinkey helped himself freely to the Christmas cake.

"They must be about four meals in one of them slices, the way it feels inside of me," the latter commented, nibbling delicately on a ring of pineapple he held in his fingers.

"It's fruit-cake, and rich; you're not supposed to eat so much of it," Wallie said, sharply.

Pinkey raised his eyebrows and regarded Wallie attentively as he continued to nibble.

"Looks like you're turrible touchy about her cookin', and swelled up over gittin' a Christmas present," he remarked, finally. "You needn't be, because she made eight other cement bricks jest like this one and sent 'em around to fellers she's sorry for."

"Oh, did she!" Wallie ejaculated, crestfallen.

"Yes, indeed," Pinkey went on, complacently, feeling a glow of satisfaction at Wallie's lengthened countenance; "she does it every Christmas. She's kind to the pore and sufferin', but it don't mean nothin' more than a dollar she'd drop in a hat somebody was passin'."

Noting the deep gloom which immediately settled upon Wallie, Pinkey could think of the prairie-dogs with more equanimity.



CHAPTER XII

THE WATER WITCH

In former days Wallie had wished for a yacht, his own stables, and such luxuries, but now he wanted a well with far greater intensity than he had desired those extravagances.

The all-important question had been whether he could at present afford it, with his money vanishing like a belated snowbank. Then, while he had been debating, Rufus Reed appeared at such a timely moment that it had seemed providential.

Mr. Reed, lately arrived from Illinois, was now sitting with his feet on the stove-hearth and so close to the coals that the cabin was strong with the odour of frying rubber, and declaring modestly:

"I may say, without braggin', that I have made an enormous success since I gave up my flour and feed store and took to well-diggin' as a perfession. By acci-dent I discovered that I was peculiarly gifted."

Watching the smoke rising from Rufus's arctics and speculating as to what might be the composition of his soles that he could endure so much heat without discomfort, Wallie inquired politely:

"In what way, may I ask?"

Mr. Reed's tone became impressive:

"I am—a water witch."

Wallie looked puzzled.

"Some call it magic, but the fact is, I am able to locate water with a forked willer and you can call it anything you want to."

Wallie regarded the worker of miracles with fresh attention. His belief in his own powers was evidently so sincere that even a skeptic could not fail to be impressed by him.

He continued:

"With my divinin' rod I have flew in the faces of the biggest geologists in the country and found water where they said there wasn't any."

"Will the divining rod tell you how far you must dig for it?"

"Pretty close to it. I count a foot to every bob of the willer."

"In a state like Illinois where there is a great deal of moisture I presume it would be possible to get water anywhere if one went deep enough, but in Wyoming—frankly, I should not like to rely on the divining rod in Wyoming, Mr. Reed."

Mr. Reed looked somewhat offended and declared with spirit:

"I'll tell you what I'll do—I'll make you a sportin' proposition. I'll test the ground with the willer and if it says we'll get water at a certain depth and we don't strike it, I'll dig till we do, for nothin', if we have to go till we hear the Chinamen gibber. That's fair, ain't it?"

Wallie could not gainsay it.

"I got a willer on my saddle and it won't cost nothin' for a demonstration. Say the word," persuasively, "and you've good as got a fine, flowing well of water."

It would do no harm to let the water witch make his test, Wallie decided, so he followed sheepishly in the wake of Rufus and his willow as he walked over the greater part of the one hundred and sixty acres.

"'Tain't nowise plentiful," the latter admitted, as with each hand gripping a prong of the willow he kept his eyes fixed upon it. "But if it's here I'm bound to find it, so don't get discouraged."

Expecting nothing, Wallie was not disappointed.

At the top of a draw some hundred and fifty yards from the cabin Rufus suddenly halted.

"I felt somethin'," he said, hopefully.

"Where?" Wallie asked, interested.

"In my arm—like pins and needles—it's a symptom. She's goin' to bob!" Excitedly. "You watch and count along of me."

The willow bobbed unmistakably.

"Sixty-eight!" They finished together.

"I told you!" Rufus cried, triumphantly. He stamped his foot: "Right here is where you'll strike it." His tone was as positive as if he saw it flowing beneath the surface.

Impressed in spite of himself, Wallie endeavoured to be conservative.

"Could it have been your subconscious mind?" he asked, doubtfully.

"I ain't any. Rufus Reed is right out in the open. I'll stake my reputation there's plenty of water if you'll go after it."

"It's rather far from the house for convenience," he objected.

"Water in Wyoming is like whiskey, you have to take it where you can get it and not be particular."

It was a temptation, and the cost at three dollars a foot was not excessive. Wallie pondered it and said finally:

"You will agree in writing to dig without remuneration until you get water if you do not strike it at sixty-eight feet?"

"An iron-clad contract will suit yours truly," Mr. Reed declared, emphatically. He added: "I'll bring two men to work the h'ist and empty the bucket. Of course you'd aim to board us?"

"Why, yes, I can," Wallie said a little uncertainly. He had not thought of that feature, but he realized it would be necessary.

He had figured that with strict economy he had provisions enough to last him well toward summer. Three men eating three meals daily might make some difference in his calculations, but nothing serious probably.

So the contract was drawn up and signed and Rufus departed, eminently satisfied, as was Wallie, who was so eager to see his well started that he could hardly wait until the following Monday.

In the interim he dreamed of his well of cold, pure water, and every time he made use of his "toe-holts" he told himself that that inconvenience would soon be eliminated. He meant to have a windmill as soon as he could afford it, for whatever else the country might lack there was no dearth of wind for motive power.

There was something permanent-looking about a well and he chuckled as he speculated as to what Canby would say when he heard of it, and he wished with all his heart that he might be around when Helene Spenceley learned that he was sinking a well on his place for household and stock purposes.

He had taken advantage of the opportunity which the gift of the cake presented to send her a note of thanks and appreciation. In reply he had received an invitation which had stung him worse than if she had written that she never wanted to see him cross her threshold.

His eyes gleamed every time he read it, which was so often that it was worn through the creases from being folded and unfolded:

Dear "Gentle Annie":

Won't you stop at the ranch on your way out and pay us a visit? I presume the middle of the summer at latest will see the last of you as I have no idea that you will be able to go through the discouragements and hardships attendant upon proving up on a homestead.

My brother also will enjoy meeting you as he has heard so much of you.

Looking for you soon, I am Sincerely, HELENE SPENCELEY.

P.S. I have a new sweater pattern that I am sure will please you.

Every word had a nettle in it, a taunt that made him tingle. It seemed to Wallie he had never known such a "catty" woman, and he meant to tell her so, some day, when he was rich and successful and had proved how wrong she was in her estimate of him.

He was tempted to send her word, on a postal, anonymously, of the well he was digging if he had not feared she would suspect him. It seemed so long to wait for Pinkey to convey the tidings.

Rufus arrived on Monday morning, and the "crew" to which he had referred proved to be members of his own family—John and Will—whales as to size, and clownish.

It came to Wallie's mind that if they did not move any faster when they worked than when they were at leisure, the well-digging would be a long process, and his heart sank when he saw them feeding their horses so liberally from the hay which had cost $20 a ton, delivered.

The first intimation Wallie had of what he had let himself in for was when Rufus asked in a confidential tone, as if he were imparting something for Wallie's ear only:

"I wonder if we could get a bite to eat before we start in? We eat so early this morning that I don't feel as if I had had anything."

Wallie had a pan of biscuit which he had intended for dinner but he concealed his reluctance and managed to say with a show of hospitality:

"Come right in; I'll get you something."

"First rate!" declared Mr. Reed with disheartening enthusiasm as Wallie placed the biscuit, butter, and molasses before him and his helpers.

Wallie hoped never again to see food—his, at least—disappear with such rapidity and in such quantities. When they had finished there was not a crumb left in the pan to tell what had been, and Rufus added to Wallie's feeling of apprehension by declaring gaily as he polished his mouth on the bandanna which he drew from his hip pocket with a flourish:

"Us Reeds are all hearty eaters. We can eat a sheep at a settin' when we're all together."

Biscuit-making was Wallie's special antipathy, and he now solaced himself with the thought that since they had eaten so many, they would eat less for dinner and he would have plenty of the fresh ones left for supper.

But disappointment was again his portion. Any hope that he might have cherished that once they were well filled up their appetites would diminish was dissipated by their performance at supper which surpassed that of dinner. The manner in which the biscuits vanished was nothing less than appalling. In addition to which, he fried ham twice for them when they hinted that they were still hungry after devouring everything before them.

He thought grimly that if their capacity for work was commensurate with their appetites, the well would be dug in twenty-four hours. But after observing them in "action" through the window he had a notion that he would have considerable more than that of their society.

As they all sprawled on his bunk in a torpor while he washed their supper dishes, he felt not only consternation but a dislike for the Reed family growing within him. Long after they were snoring in their blankets, he lay awake calculating how long his provisions would last at such a rate of depletion.

It did not sound so much of a "sporting proposition" as when Rufus had made his proposal, and Wallie sighed in the darkness as he thought that there seemed a million ways of making mistakes in Wyoming and this already had the earmarks of being one of them.

If they found water at the depth indicated by the divining rod, it might not so much matter, but there was the other contingency confronting him—feeding the Reeds indefinitely! There was nothing to do in the circumstances but await developments, so Wallie slept finally to dream that he had discarded the table for a trough to which the Reeds came when he went to the door and called: "Soo-ee! Soo-ee!"

The developments, however, were not of an encouraging nature. In addition to a capacity for food which placed the Reeds among the world's marvels they were of a slowness of movement Wallie never had seen equalled. Whenever he looked through the window, it was to see one or the other resting from the exertion of emptying a bucket of dirt or turning the windlass.

The well deepened by inches rather than feet while Wallie sweated, and his suspicion gradually became a conviction as he watched them that they were prolonging the work purposely. It seemed to be in the nature of a vacation for them with just enough exercise to keep them in condition.

His antipathy had become aversion, and Wallie sometimes caught himself with his fork poised in mid air, stopping to hate John, who munched and smacked beside him, or Will, who gobbled at the end of the table, or Rufus, shovelling opposite him. Again, as they came at a trot in response to his dinner call, he visualized himself braining them with the axe as they entered, and found pleasure in the picture.

If hatred generated a poison in the system as asserted, Wallie had a notion that his bite would have been as fatal as a cobra's.

His feeling reached a point where the well became of secondary importance. To find a way to rid himself of the Reed family was in his thoughts constantly, but there seemed nothing to do but endure them somehow until they had sunk the sixty-eight feet, according to the contract, so he went on suffering and cooking with all the grace he could muster.

Yet as the hole deepened he could not help a certain feeling of pride in it. The sense of possession was a strong trait in him, and this was his well on his homestead. He always felt the same pleasant glow of ownership when he looked at his cabin and his fence, even at his dry cow and his locoed horses, and once he had a well with a curb over it! Wallie always expanded his chest a little as he thought of it.

He made frequent pilgrimages to the well, and as he hung over the edge and called down, Rufus always replied to his inquiry:

"I don't see any indications yet but I look for it to come with a gush when we do strike it."

When they reached sixty-eight feet and there was still no sign of moisture Wallie told Reed that he was willing to abrogate the contract.

"No, sir!" Rufus declared, vigorously. "I've staked my reputation on this well and I'm goin' to keep on diggin'."

At seventy-two feet Wallie was desperate. The hole was still as dry as punk, and boarding the Reeds was nothing less than ruinous; besides, he was nauseated with cooking for three persons whom he detested. They could not be insulted, he discovered, and were determined to make him abide by his contract to board them.

A solution of his problem came in the night with such force and suddenness that he rolled to and fro in his bunk, hugging himself in ecstasy. He longed for morning to put his idea into execution and when it came, for the first time since their arrival, he was delighted to see the Reeds seating themselves at the table.

There were potatoes, bacon, and pancakes, with coffee, for breakfast.

John dubiously eyed the transparent fluid in his cup which might as easily have been tea, and commented:

"You musta left out somethin'."

Will made a wry face after filling it with half a pancake:

"Gosh! But you throwed in the sody. They ain't fit fer a dog to eat. I can't go 'em."

With the intention of taking the taste of soda out of his mouth he filled it with potato, and immediately afterward he and John jammed in the doorway as they tried to get through it simultaneously.

Wiping their streaming eyes and gulping water, they said accusingly:

"There's a can of cayenne if there's a pinch in them pertaters!"

"And the bacon's burned to a cracklin'," observed Rufus.

"Perhaps you're getting tired of my cooking?" Wallie suggested, artlessly.

"I'm tired now if this is a spec'min of what you aim to feed us," John declared, suspiciously. "I bleeve you done it on purpose."

Wallie did not deny it.

"I'm holler to the toes and I can't work on an empty stummick," said Will, disgustedly.

Only Rufus went on eating as if it took more than a can of soda and a box of pepper to spoil his food for him and he explained as they wondered at it:

"I ain't no taste sence I had scarlet fever so it don't bother me."

"Ain't you goin' to git us somethin'?" John demanded, finally, seeing Wallie made no move to cook fresh food for them.

"No," Wallie answered, bluntly. "There's nothing in the contract which specifies the manner in which I shall prepare your food for you or the amount of it. Dinner will be worse than breakfast if you want the truth from me."

"I'm quittin'!" the two declared together.

"Now, look here, boys!" the old man expostulated. "We got to finish this job and you know the reason."

"Reason or no reason, I ain't starvin' myself to oblige nobody," John declared, vigorously, "and he's got the drop on us about the eatin'."

"Then go—the two of you!" Reed cried, angrily, "I'm goin' to stay—I ain't nothin' to complain of. Him and me," he nodded at Wallie, "can dig that well without ye."

Surly, and without speaking, the boys took their departure.

"They got bad dispositions—they take after their mother," Rufus remarked, looking after them. "With you to work the windlass and empty the bucket we'll make out without them till I pick up another crew somewhere."

"I am willing to accept my loss and quit," Wallie pleaded.

"Well, I ain't!" declared Rufus, unnecessarily bellicose. "A contract is a contract and I got you in writin'."

Wallie could not deny it and subsided meekly, putting a ham on to boil with a cabbage while Rufus smoked until he was ready to assist him.

"If they's anything I like it's a good mess of ham and cabbage," he observed.

"I am glad to have found something to stimulate your appetite—it's worried me," replied Wallie. But his sarcasm was wasted on Rufus who arose, yawning, when Wallie indicated that he was ready.

Turning the windlass according to instructions, Wallie deposited Rufus in the bottom. Then at intervals he hoisted the bucket which Rufus filled in leisurely fashion, and emptied it, performing the two men's work easily.

Wallie went down occasionally to stoke the fire, and upon his return reported so favourably upon the ham and cabbage that Rufus took to consulting his watch rather frequently after ten-thirty.

"I'll quit at 'leven," he informed Wallie, "and that'll give you plenty of time to make a batch of biscuit and get dinner."

Wallie agreed with him that it was an excellent idea and promptly at eleven pulled up the bucket of dirt which was to be the last one.

When it did not come down immediately, Rufus called to him:

"Hi! I'm ready! Get a move on, for I'm starvin'."

There was no response at the opening.

"What's the matter with you?" he demanded, impatiently.

The echo of his own voice answered him. Slightly alarmed he called louder:

"Macpherson! What's happened to ye?"

Still no answer.

Distinctly nervous, Rufus shouted at the top of his lungs for Wallie and the bucket, breaking into a perspiration at the continued silence.

Was he sick? Fainted? Dead? Many things that could occur came to Reed as he halloed futilely.

When one o'clock came he was hoarse from yelling and sick with fear at his predicament. His imagination painted gruesome pictures as he sweated. He saw himself weak and emaciated, dying slowly of starvation, collapsing, finally to lie undiscovered for days, weeks maybe. The memory of a field mouse that had fallen into a pit haunted him, its futile, frantic struggles to scale the steep sides, and he remembered that when he had passed that way again he had looked and found it dead in the bottom. He wished now that he had rescued it.

His suffering would be worse than that of the field mouse, for he had the intelligence to know that it was useless to struggle, that there was no hope for him unless someone came to his assistance. And merciful heavens, how hungry he was at only an hour past his dinner time; what would his sensations be at an hour past his supper time or at one o'clock to-morrow? He made a sound like someone groaning in a rain barrel as he thought of the ham and cabbage boiling dry in the cabin.

It made the back of his neck ache to watch the opening of his prison and the patch of blue sky, from which he prayed, vaguely, that a rope ladder might descend to rescue him. So he sat down finally with his back against the side of the well, his knees to his chin, and his head bowed, to await the inevitable.

When three o'clock came he could no longer doubt but that some accident had befallen Wallie. He had given up hope and endeavoured to resign himself to the fate awaiting him. Remorse mingled with the pangs of hunger and the cold fear of dying which was upon him. He wondered if this torturing end was a judgment sent upon him. He could scarcely doubt it.

But if by some miracle he got out—if the Lord saw fit to save him—he would be a different man. The Almighty had his word for it. Still sitting with his back against the wall and his cramped legs extended in front of him, Rufus rolled his eyes in supplication to the circular blue space above him and registered this vow with all the fervour and sincerity of which he was capable.

He moved uneasily. He was vaguely conscious of a dampness. He felt mechanically of that section of his overalls upon which he was sitting. He sprang to his feet with an exclamation and looked at the spot he had occupied. Moisture! A seepage! Water! His eyes grew big with horror. Even as he looked with dilating pupils he could see the earth darken with the spreading moisture. He had sunk too many wells not to know what it portended. Not only his days but his hours perhaps were numbered. If it was alkali, it would seep in slowly and prolong his agony, if it were not, it would come faster. He would die literally in a grave of his own digging.

He sat down again because his shaking legs refused to support him, and leaned his head against the side for the same reason. Rufus was no hero and there was no need to pretend to be, drowning by himself like a rat in a bucket.

As he leaned there, nauseated, he caught a sound, or thought so, which increased the sinking sensation, the feeling of collapse that overwhelmed him. He took off his hat and laid his ear against the wall to be sure of it. He had not been mistaken. His time on earth was shorter even than he had imagined. The sound he had heard was the rumble of a subterranean current that would soon break through, flowing faster and faster as the opening enlarged until it came with a gush, finally. He could visualize it because he had seen it happen. It would rise to his ankles, his knees, his armpits, then cover him, and he would go to his final punishment by the last route he ever had pictured!

Rufus got on his knees in an attitude of prayer and supplication. The cracked remnants of his stentorian voice he used to the utmost advantage. No Methodist exhorter ever prayed with more passionate fervour, and he could not in a lifetime have kept the promises he made to his Maker if only He would release him from the trap into which he had gotten himself through his own evil doing.

"Lord, it was wrong for me to take that $150, but Canby tempted me. I needed the money or I don't know as I would have done it. If You'll jest get me out of this, Lord, all the rest of my life I'll do what I can for You! I'll go to church—I'll give to the heathen—I'll stop takin' Your name in vain, and say my prayers reg'lar! Oh, Lord! Once I stole a halter and I ask Your forgiveness. And I left a neighbour's gate open on purpose so the stock got into his cornfield, but I ain't a bad man naturally, and this is the first real crookedness I ever done intentionally. Lord," he pleaded, "hear my humble prayer and send somebody!"

At the top of the well Wallie had his suspicions verified. So Canby had laid one more straw on the camel's back to break it!

Any compunctions of conscience he might have had for putting Rufus through such mental anguish vanished.

Leaning over the edge of the well, he called down cheerily:

"How you making it?"

Wallie's voice sounded like the voice of an angel to the prisoner. Relief and joy beyond description filled him. Hoarse as a bullfrog, he quavered:

"In Mercy's name let me out of here, Macpherson!"

"You're all right where you are, Rufus," Wallie answered. "When you're down there you are out of mischief."

"I'm hungry—I'm starvin'——"

"I don't know when I've eaten such a ham, tender, a delicious flavour, and just enough fat on it—I thought of you all through dinner, Rufus."

"We've struck water—a big flow—I can hear it—it'll break through any minute!"

"That's fine! Splendid!"

"You don't understand!" Rufus cried, desperately. "I'm liable to be drowned before you can h'ist me out of here. I can heard it roar—like a cloudburst!"

"Tell me about that deal between you and Canby," Wallie suggested.

"Let down the bucket!" Rufus chattered.

"Couldn't think of it. My eyeteeth are coming through and I don't like to interrupt 'em."

"I'll make a clean breast of it."

"I don't want to pollute my well unless I have to, but that's the only way you'll get out of there," Wallie told him, grimly.

"Canby's out to break you in one way and another. He thought there was no water over here and he paid me to talk you into diggin' for it. He seen me and my boys eat one day in the mess house and he said 'twould break the Bank of England to board us, so he wanted that clause in the contract, and after sixty-eight feet he paid us, besides a hundred and fifty dollars bonus. I done wrong, Mr. Macpherson, and I freely admit it!"

"And you like my cooking, Rufus? You like your food highly seasoned with plenty of soda in the pancakes and dough-goods?"

"Yes, Mr. Macpherson," whined Rufus. "I never complained about your cookin', I've nothin' against you personal, and I'll knock off somethin' on the bill for bringin' in water if you'll jest let down that——" A screech finished the sentence. Then:

"C-r-rr-ripes! She's busted through! She's comin' like a river!"

He jumped and clawed at the sides in his frenzy, and Wallie could see that Rufus well might do so, for even as Wallie looked the water rushed in and rose to Rufus's ankles, and before he could get the bucket over the edge and started downward it was well to his knees, bubbling faster with every second as the opening widened.

It was indeed time for action, and Wallie himself felt relief when the windlass spun and he heard the splash of the bucket in the bottom.

Rufus's shrieks urged haste as he began to wind laboriously, and with reason, for Rufus was heavy and though Wallie put forth all his strength it was no easy task single-handed, and Rufus rose so slowly that the water gained rapidly.

It became a race between Wallie and the subterranean stream that had been tapped, and he was panting and all but exhausted when Rufus rose to the surface. As he stepped from the bucket the water reached the top, poured over the edge, and rushed down the "draw" to Skull Creek.

Wallie looked with bulging eyes for a moment and when he had recovered from his astonishment, he turned joyfully, his grudge forgotten, and shook Rufus's hand in congratulation.

A moment later his enthusiasm was tempered somewhat by the discovery that he had brought to the surface the strongest flow of salt water in the country!



CHAPTER XIII

WIPED OUT

"It's shore wicked the way you curse, Old Timer," said Pinkey, reprovingly, as Wallie came up from the corral carrying an empty milk bucket in one hand and testing the other for broken bones. "I could hear you talkin' to Rastus from whur I'm settin'."

Wallie exhibited a row of bruised knuckles and replied fiercely:

"If ever I had an immortal soul I've lost it since that calf came! Between his bunting on one side and me milking on the other, the cow kicked the pail over."

"Quirl you a brownie and blow it threw your hackamore and forgit it," said Pinkey, soothingly, as he handed him a book of cigarette papers, with a sack of tobacco and made room for him on the door-sill. "I ain't used to cow milk anyhow; air-tight is better."

Wallie took the offering but remained standing, rolling it dextrously as he looked off at his eighty acres of spring wheat showing emerald green in the light of a July sunset.

Pinkey eyed him critically—the tufts of hair which stood out like brushes through the cracks in what had once been a fine Panama hat, his ragged shirt, the faded overalls, the riding boots with heels so run over that he walked on the side of them.

Unconscious of the scrutiny, Wallie continued to gaze in a kind of holy ecstasy at his wheat-field until Pinkey ejaculated:

"My, but you've changed horrible!"

"How, changed?" Wallie asked, absently.

"You're so danged dirty! I should think you'd have to sand that shirt before you could hold it to git into it."

"I hardly ever take it off," said Wallie. "I've been so busy I haven't had time to think how I looked, but I hope now to have more leisure. Pinkey," impressively, "I believe my troubles are about over."

"Don't you think it!" replied Pinkey, bluntly. "A dry-farmer kin have six months of hard luck three times a year for four and five years, hand-runnin'. In fact, they ain't no limit to the time and the kind of things that kin happen to a dry-farmer."

"But what could happen now?" Wallie asked, startled.

"It's too clost to bed-time fer me to start in tellin' you," said Pinkey, drily.

"You're too pessimistic, Pinkey. I've prepared the soil and seed according to the instructions in the Farmers' Bulletins from Washington, and as a result I've got the finest stand of wheat around here—even Boise Bill said so when he rode by yesterday."

"Rave on!" Pinkey looked at him mockingly. "It's pitiful to hear you. You read them bulletins awhile and you won't know nothin'. I seen a feller plant some corn his Congressman sent him and the ears was so hard the pigs used to stand and squeal in front of 'em. But of course I'm glad you're feelin' so lucky; I'm scairt of the feelin' myself for it makes me take chances and I always git a jolt for it."

Wallie's face was sober as he confided:

"If anything went wrong I'd be done for. I'm so near broke that I count my nickels like some old woman with her butter-and-egg money."

"I guessed it," said Pinkey, calmly, "from the rabbit fur I see layin' around the dooryard."

"Nearly everything has cost double what I thought it would, but if I get a good crop and the price of wheat holds up I'll come out a-flying."

"If nothin' happens," Pinkey supplemented.

"I want to show you one of those bulletins."

"I've seen plenty of 'em. You can't stop 'em once you git 'em started. Them, and pamphlets tellin' us why we went to war, has killed off many a mail-carrier that had to fight his way through blizzards, or be fined fer not deliverin' 'em on schedule. I ain't strong fer gover'mint literature."

Wallie stepped inside the cabin and brought out a pamphlet with an illustration of twelve horses hitched to a combined harvester and thresher, standing in a wheat-field of boundless acreage.

"There," he said, proudly, "you see my ambition!"

Pinkey regarded it, unexcited.

"That's a real nice picture," he said, finally, "but I thought you aimed to go in for cattle?"

"I did. But I've soured on them since that calf came and I've been milking."

Pinkey agreed heartily:

"I'd ruther 'swamp' fer a livin' than do low-down work like milkin'."

"When I come in at night, dog-tired and discouraged, I get out this picture and look at it and tell myself that some day I'll be driving twelve horses on a thresher. A chap thinks and does curious things when he has nobody but himself for company."

"That's me, too," said Pinkey, understandingly. "When I'm off alone huntin' stock, I ride fer hours wonderin' if it's so that you kin make booze out of a raisin."

"Let's walk out and look at the wheat," Wallie suggested.

Pinkey complied obligingly, though farming was an industry in which he took no interest.

Wallie's pride in his wheat was inordinate. He never could get over a feeling of astonishment that the bright green grain had come from seeds of his planting—that it was his—and he would reap the benefit. Nature was more wonderful than he had realized and he never before had appreciated her. He always forgot the heart-breaking and back-breaking labour when he stood as now, surveying with glowing face the even green carpet stretching out before him. In such moments he found his compensation for all he had gone through since he arrived in Wyoming, and he smiled pityingly as he thought of the people at The Colonial, rocking placidly on the veranda.

"Did you ever see anything prettier?" Wallie demanded, his eyes shining.

"It's all right," Pinkey murmured, absently.

"You're not looking," Wallie said, sharply.

"I was watchin' them cattle."

"I don't see any."

Pinkey pointed, but Wallie could see nothing.

"If they got cows on Mars, I'll bet I could read the bran's," Pinkey boasted. "Can't you see them specks movin' off yonder?"

Wallie admitted he could not.

"It's cattle, and they act like somebody's drivin' 'em," Pinkey declared, positively. "Looks like it's too early to be movin' 'em to the mountain."

His curiosity satisfied, he gave the wheat his attention.

"It looks fine, Wallie," he said with sincerity.

Wallie could not resist crowing:

"You didn't think I'd last, did you? Miss Spenceley didn't, either. She'll be disappointed very likely when she hears I've succeeded."

"Don't cackle till you've laid your aig, Gentle Annie. When you've thrashed and sold your grain and got your money in the bank, then I'll help you. We'll git drunk if I have to rob a drug-store."

"You're always putting a damper on me. It was you who advised me to go in for dry-farming," Wallie reminded him.

"I figgered that if you lived through a year of it," Pinkey replied, candidly, "then almost anything else would look like a snap to you."

It was plain that in spite of his prospects Pinkey was not sanguine, but in this moment of his exultation failure seemed impossible to Wallie.

In various small ways Canby had tried to break him and had not succeeded. Boise Bill had prophesied that he would not "winter"—yet here he was with every reason to believe that he would also "summer." Wallie felt rather invincible as he reflected upon it, and the aurora borealis did not exceed in colour the outlook his fancy painted that evening.

"It's eight-thirty," Pinkey hinted. "When I set up till all hours I over-sleep in the morning."

Wallie came to earth reluctantly, and as he returned to the cabin he again permitted himself the luxury of pitying the folk of The Colonial who knew nothing of such rapturous moments in that stale, uneventful world which was so remote and different from the present that it was beginning to seem like a dream to him.

They had been asleep for an hour, more possibly, when Pinkey nudged Wallie violently.

"What's that huffin', do you reckon?"

Wallie awoke with a start and listened.

"Huffing" was the right word. Lying next to the logs, some large animal was breathing so heavily in Wallie's ear that it sounded like a bellows. He peered through a crack and saw something that looked like a mastodon in the darkness tugging at a sack he had used for chinking. It was not a horse and was too large for his Jersey. It flashed through his mind that it might be a roaming silvertip from the mountain.

Pinkey was out of the bunk at a bound and around the corner of the cabin, where his suspicions were instantly verified.

"It's a bull!" he shouted. "I thought it. Looks like a thousand head of cattle tramplin' down your wheat-field!"

Wallie turned sick. He could not move for a moment. His air-castles fell so hard he could almost hear them.

"Do you think they've been in long?" he asked, weakly.

"Can't tell till daylight." Pinkey was getting into his clothes hurriedly.

Wallie was now in the doorway and he could make out innumerable dark shapes browsing contentedly in his grain-field.

"What'll we do?" he asked, despairingly.

"Do?" replied Pinkey, savagely, tugging at his boot straps. "I'll send one whur the dogs won't bite him with every ca'tridge. We'll run a thousand dollars' worth of taller off the rest of 'em. Git into your clothes, Gentle Annie, and we'll smoke 'em up proper."

"I don't see how it could happen," said Wallie, his voice trembling. "The fence was good!"

"If it had been twenty feet high 'twould 'a' been all the same," Pinkey answered. "Them cattle was drove in."

"You mean——" Wallie's mouth opened.

"Shore—Canby! It come to my mind last night when I seen that bunch movin'. Pretty coarse work I call it, but he thought you was alone and wouldn't ketch on to it."

"He'll pay for this!" cried Wallie, chokingly.

"You can't do nothin' with him but deal him misery. He's got too much money and pull fer you. Do you know what I think's gnawin' on him?"

"My taking up a homestead——"

"That, too, but mostly because Helene dressed him down for sellin' that locoed team to you. He's jealous."

Even in his despair Wallie felt pleased that any one, especially Canby, should be jealous of him because of Helene Spenceley.

"He aims to marry her," Pinkey added. "I wisht you could beat his time and win yerself a home somehow. I don't think you got any show, but if I was you I'd take another turn around my saddle-horn and hang on. Whenever I kin," kindly, "I'll speak a good word for you. Throw your saddle on your horse and step, young feller. I'm gone!"

The faint hope which Wallie had nursed that the damage might not be so great as he had feared vanished with daylight. Not only was the grain trampled so the field looked like a race course, but panel after panel of the fence was down where the quaking-asp posts had snapped like lead-pencils.

As Pinkey and Wallie surveyed it in the early dawn Wallie's voice had a catch in it when he said finally:

"I guess I'm done farming. They made a good job of it."

"I'm no 'sharp' but it looks to me like some of that wheat would straighten up if it got a good wettin'."

Wallie said grimly:

"The only thing I forgot to buy when I was outfitting in Philadelphia was a rain-making apparatus."

"On the level," Pinkey declared, earnestly, "I bleeve we're goin' to have a shower—the clouds bankin' up over there in the northwest is what made me think of it."

Wallie's short laugh was cynical.

"It might drown somebody half a mile from me but it wouldn't settle the dust in my dooryard."

"I see you're gittin' homesteaditis," Pinkey commented, "but jest the same them clouds look like they meant business."

Wallie felt a glimmer of hope in spite of himself and he scrutinized the clouds closely.

"They do look black," he admitted. "But since it hasn't rained for two months it seems too much to expect that it will rain when I need it so desperately."

"It's liable to do anything. I've seen it snow here in August. A fur-lined linen duster is the only coat fer this country. I'll gamble it's goin' to do somethin', but only the Big Boss knows what."

During breakfast they got up at intervals to look through the doorway, and while they washed dishes and tidied the cabin they watched the northwest anxiously.

"She's movin' right along," Pinkey reported. "It might be a stiddy rain, and then agin it might be a thunder-shower, though you don't often look for 'em in the morning."

The light grew subdued with the approaching storm and Wallie commented upon the coolness. Then he went out in the dooryard and stood a moment.

"The clouds are black as ink, and how still it is," he said, wonderingly. "There isn't a breath of air stirring."

Pinkey was sitting on the floor oiling his saddle when he tilted his head suddenly, and listened. He got up abruptly and stood in the doorway, concentrating all his faculties upon some sound of which he alone was cognizant, for Wallie was aware of nothing unusual save the uncanny stillness.

"Hear that?" The sharp note in Pinkey's voice filled Wallie with a nameless fear.

"No—what?"

"That roar—can't you hear it?"

Wallie listened intently.

"Yes—like a crashing—what is it?"

"Hail! And a terror! We've got to run the stock in." He was off with Wallie following and together they got the cow and horses under shelter with all the haste possible.

The sound preceded the storm by some little time, but each moment the roar and the crash of it grew louder and when it finally reached them Wallie gazed open-mouthed.

Accustomed to hail like tapioca, he never had seen anything like the big, jagged chunks of ice which struck the ground with such force that they bounded into the air again. Any one of them would have knocked a man unconscious. It seemed as if they would batter his roof in, and they came so thick that the stable and corral could be seen only indistinctly.

They both stood in the doorway, fascinated and awe-stricken.

"Hear it pound! This is the worst I've seen anywhur. You're licked, Gentle Annie."

"Yes," said Wallie with a white face. "This finishes me."

"You'll have to kiss your wheat good-bye. It'll be beat into the ground too hard ever to straighten." He laid an arm about Wallie's shoulder and there was a sympathy in his voice few had heard there:

"You've put up a good fight, old pardner, and even if you are counted out, it's no shame to you. You've done good fer a Scissor-bill, Gentle Annie."

Wallie clenched his hands and shook himself free of Pinkey's arm while his tense voice rang out above the clatter and crash of the storm:

"I'm not licked! I won't be licked! I'm going to stick, somehow! And what's more," he turned to Pinkey fiercely, "if you don't stop calling me 'Gentle Annie,' I'll knock your block off!"

Pinkey looked at him with his pale, humorous eyes and beamed approvingly.



CHAPTER XIV

LIFTING A CACHE

The Prouty barber lathering the face of a customer, after the manner of a man whitewashing a chicken coop, paused on an upward stroke to listen. Then he stepped to the door, looked down the street, and nodded in confirmation. After which he returned, laid down his brush, and pinned on a nickel badge, which act transformed him into the town constable.

The patron in the chair, a travelling salesman, watched the pantomime with interest.

"One moment, please." The barber-officer excused himself and stepped out to the edge of the sidewalk, where he awaited the approach of a pair on horseback who were making the welkin ring with a time-honoured ballad of the country:

I'm a howler from the prairies of the West. If you want to die with terror, look at me. I'm chain-lightnin'——